


A Second Shot

by haraya



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 05:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11685072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haraya/pseuds/haraya
Summary: Shepard and Ashley try to figure out what 'normal' means for them in a post-Reaper galaxy.





	A Second Shot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cakeisatruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakeisatruth/gifts).



> All lines of poetry are taken from Tennyson's _Ulysses._
> 
> Warnings for: mentions of amputation and PTSD.

_Death closes all: but something ere the end,_  
_Some work of noble note, may yet be done,  
_ _Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods._

 

\---

 

She remembers: Ash had sent her that stanza, in an awkward, fumbling email, after the first time she’d died.

It’s still a bit odd to think of it that way—having a first death, as if she’d have a second shot at it.

_(More like death has a second shot at you, eh, Skipper?)_

She remembers: a smile, warm like just-vacated bedsheets, curling at the edges like pages of poetry.

Shepard takes a breath, and chooses a second shot at life instead.

 

\---

 

Shepard has always been a fighter. It’s all she’s ever known.

It’s a change, perhaps, to be fighting the limitations of one’s own body instead of an outside force, but a fight is a fight all the same.

Shepard’s leg is, put bluntly, unsalvageable, and no amount of physical therapy or nerve stimulators or any of Miranda’s fancy cybernetics is going to change that fact. Shepard stares at the dead limb and decides, prudent as ever, to cut her losses.

Ashley is there to hold Shepard’s hand when she emerges from the grip of the anesthetic, groggy and disoriented and numb in more places than she’d expected to be. The silhouette under the scratchy hospital blanket is frighteningly unfamiliar, but Ashley’s grip is both an anchor and a reminder—of where she is and what she’s done and what she’s given up.

(Shepard wonders, briefly, if it is a selfish thing to mourn over such a loss.)

When Ash squeezes her hand a second time, Shepard chooses to remember what she still has left instead.

They’d always been fighters, the two of them.

Shepard forgets, sometimes: they’d always been fighting _together,_ too.

 

\---

 

Shepard’s never been much of an easy sleeper, not even before Alchera.

The Alliance was never the kind of environment conducive to healthy sleeping habits, but now Shepard’s coming to terms with the fact that this is another thing she has to pay for the price of saving a galaxy.

Dreams have never been kind to Shepard, but now—now guilt and ghosts and grief always wait for her just on the other side of consciousness, and such specters never make for restful sleep.

She wakes herself—and Ashley—often, _too_ often, in the middle of the night, crying out for Kaidan and Mordin and Thane, for Legion and Anderson and the little boy in Vancouver who was there at the start, and at the end. All the people she’d fought for and bled for and almost _(—would have—_ had she been given a choice) died for, but had been unable to save, in the end.

Ashley’s coming to terms with this, too—and the way she does is this: while shadows wait for Shepard as soon as she closes her eyes, when she opens them again what is waiting for her is poetry, and gentle kisses on tear-stained cheeks, and the warmth of a lover’s embrace, solid and alive and _real._

_“—it may be that the gulfs will wash us down:_  
_It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,  
_ _And see the great Achilles, whom we knew—”_

And it is here that Shepard finds rest, at last—awake, and warm, and _loved,_ listening to gently whispered poetry as her ghosts stay mercifully, _blessedly_ silent, even if only for a while.

 

\---

 

_It isn’t as if their lives had ever been normal,_ Shepard muses, trying to shake off Urz from where he’s stubbornly gnawing on her prosthetic leg as Ashley watches with a smirk from the couch.

Rogue Spectres and Reapers and a timely resurrection thrown in—Shepard thinks it all sounds like a badly-written plot for a Blasto film knock-off.

And yet, and _yet—_

_(It’s been a good ride.)_

_(The best.)_

Shepard looks out of the big picture windows and lets her eyes roam over Lowell City, and the red Martian landscape beyond that, and the expanse of stars beyond that still.

She reminds herself: they’d fought for this—for peace, for a future, for the right to sit in quiet living rooms with mismatched furniture and to grow old never having to hold a gun again.

Well, maybe not with live ammo, anyway.

Shepard thinks of their guns in the little armory tucked in a corner of the apartment. She knows Ashley still takes them out diligently, every single day, cleaning each part in precise, perfect movements from a lifetime of practice.

But she also knows Ashley puts them back away each time, closing the gleaming silver cases with a resolute click that sounds less like _see you later_ and more like _if we ever meet again._

_“We are not now that strength,”_ Shepard murmurs, _“which in old days moved earth and heaven—”_

“Hm?” Ashley calls from the couch. “You say something, Skipper?”

Shepard thinks of her leg, and the silver scars on Urz’s flank, and the intermittent back pains that still plague Ashley from time to time—the consequences of having a Mako tossed onto her on that overcast day in London.

“I was thinking,” Shepard says, “that we should have another party.”

“What for?” Ashley says, crossing over to Shepard and settling down behind her, and gives Urz a scratch under the chin.

“Oh,” Shepard says, smiling as she leans back, “I can think of a few reasons.”

_(—that which we are, we are;_  
_One equal temper of heroic hearts,_  
_Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
_ _To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.)_

Shepard looks out at the galaxy they fought for; she thinks of her leg and their guns and their mismatched crockery in the kitchen, and how most of her civilian clothes have an N7 logo somewhere on them.

She thinks (hopes— _prays,_ really) that domesticity might not be such a terrible thing after all.

 

\---

 

The day Shepard finishes organizing all her final Spectre paperwork, she comes out into the living room to see Ash sitting on the couch, knees curled up under her, with an envelope on the coffee table that looks suspiciously similar to the one in Shepard’s hand.

“Gunning for an early retirement, Spectre Williams?” Shepard asks, a tentative smile playing at the corner of her mouth, as if it's unsure it should be there at all.

But Ashley shoots her a full-blown grin, stretching languidly on the couch with the air of a lazy, satisfied cat.

“I like to think of it as more of a _very_ extended and _very_ well-deserved vacation.”

Shepard collapses beside her on the couch, tossing her own paperwork atop Ashley’s.

“Pity,” Shepard says. “I was looking forward to being the cute little housewife to my badass breadwinner girlfriend.”

“Off the record, Skipper,” Ashley fires back, “you’d burn down the apartment trying to boil water.”

“Hey, you never know what I could learn with all this time on my hands.”

They watch the skycars zooming past outside their apartment window, every fading tail-light feeling like a little bit of the universe passing them by.

“You sure about this?” Shepard asks into the comfortable silence. “Figured a Williams would want to see how far up the ladder she can get.”

Ashley snorts. “My middle finger up those snooty little Councilors’ asses is far up enough for me.”

“Ooh, kinky,” Shepard says, smirking. “Didn’t know you were into that kinda thing, Williams.”

Ashley snickers, shoving at Shepard’s shoulder, and Shepard—being, of course, Commander Shepard Herself—shoves back.

When they submit their resignations the next day it will be recorded by the Council and future historians as the end of their story.

For Humanity’s First Two Spectres, this suits them just fine.

“So,” Shepard says, linking their arms together, “ready to have that party, Ash?”

Ashley smiles, and squeezes her hand.

“As long as Liara keeps drunk-Javik out of the master bedroom this time.”

But for Shepard and Ashley, this is where everything begins.

 

\---

 

_The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:_  
_The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep_  
_Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,  
_ _'Tis not too late to seek a newer world._


End file.
